‘We’re going to be playing to our park’
Jackfish throw their hopes behind strong pitching staff
“When you see the visiting team’s score is zero, that doesn’t mean the scoreboard is broken. We just have a really good team here.”
When he said that, Mayor Frank Campion was talking to the home crowd when he took part in the lighting ceremony for the new scoreboard at Welland Stadium.
He also could have been channelling his inner Brian Essery when he delivered the chamber of commerce line at an open house hosted by the Welland Jackfish.
Unlike Campion, Essery, manager of the Intercounty Baseball League team, won’t go on record as promising nothing but shutout victories in the Jackfish’s 21 home games this season.
However, pitching will be the team’s strength heading into a third season, playing most of its game in a spacious, pitching-friendly ballpark.
“This is a good park if you’re a pitcher. It’s big, it’s wide, it’s spacious,” said Essery, a right-handed starter during a Central Ontario Baseball Association Hall of Fame pitching career with the St. Catharines Metros.
During the off-season and coming off a year in which they finished .500 and were swept in the first round of the playoffs, Essery, hitting coach Rick Pillitteri and general manager Jason McKay decided to again build this year’s team around the ballpark.
“The ball doesn’t fly out of here like it does if you go to Toronto, Kitchener,” the third-year manager said. “There’s a couple of smaller parks in our league, even Barrie the ball can fly out of there as well.”
He pointed out Labatt Park in London, home of the defending league and playoff champion Majors, is similar to Welland Stadium.
“We’ve changed the dynamic of our team again. We’re going to be playing to our park,” Essery said. “We’re going to be top-heavy on pitching, we’re going to be young, we’re going to be fast, and we’re going to be an exciting team. “We’re going to play to our park.” Essery recalled that in their inaugural season in 2019 the Jackfish had a similar team to the one they will field this year.
“We flipped that around for last year after missing the COVID year, and we went with a bigger team to try to generate more offence,” he said.
“We found that we had some success. In other areas, we didn’t.”
Essery likes “this style of game” as does Pillitteri, who is in charge of the offence, assistant coach Pat Casey and McKay.
“We’re all on board with this style of team,” Essery said. “We’re building something special here for the next two, three years.”
The Jackfish hope to finish the 42-game regular season, up from 30 last year and six more than campaigns at pre-pandemic levels, between third and fifth place in the eight-team league.
“Three or four would be good, get a home playoff series in the first round — and just be competitive,” Essery said.
“We want to be competitive every game, and I know we have the team. We built the team to be competitive.
“We’re going to be in a lot of close games.”
Welland will take the field for Thursday night’s season opener against the visiting Brantford Red Sox without six players from last year’s team. All signed contracts to play professionally in the United
Welland will take the field for Thursday night’s season opener against the visiting Brantford Red Sox without six players from last year’s team. All signed contracts to play professionally in the United States
States: Christian Young, American Association; Brendan Dadson, Jake Polancic, Frontier League; Griffin Keller, Dante Tofteland, Cole Warkin, Pioneer League.
“We are losing a good portion of our offence, and a couple of top-ofthe-rotation guys.”
Lineup churn comes with the territory of fielding a team in a development league. Each of the players left the Jackfish with the team’s blessing.
“We’re proud of those guys. We want to move guys up, that’s what we’re all about,” Essery said.
The Jackfish feel those losses will be offset by “some really good pickups” during the off-season, most notably Gianfranco Morello from Brantford.
Last season, he hit seven doubles and drove in 17 runs while stealing 13 bases in 28 games with the Red Sox.
“That’s going to be our table-setter. Being able to trade for him is a massive win for us,” Essery said of the 27-year-old infielder. “That’s a top-of-the-lineup guy, that’s an allstar in our league.
“He’s fast, he’s going to steal bases. Bringing in a guy like that is going to help us to do a lot of stuff that we wanted to do this year.”
Rob Nixon, a 33-year-old righthanded starter from Welland, is joining his hometown team after pitching at the Class AA level in what is now the Cleveland Guardians organization.
“We count on him to be one of our top rotation guys, and he’ll be starting for us on the mound,” Essery said.
Three players from Niagara Falls — Brandon Underhill, infielder; Eric Marriott, Ethan Pasco, outfielders — are back for 2022, though Marriott won’t rejoin the Jackfish until after the completion of the Western Canada Baseball League season. He will be managing the Moose Jaw Miller Express in the summer league for collegiate players with at least one year remaining in their eligibility.
“He’ll be back with us for the playoffs as soon as their season is over,” Essery said.
The Jackfish were eager to welcome back Euclides Leyer, their first-year ace, but he signed a pro contract to pitch in the Atlantic League, a top independent league that is equivalent to triple-A and double-A.
“There are a lot of ex-big leaguers in that league. He’s sitting on the doorstep of something special,” Essery said. “We know he’s 32 years old now, but we’re hoping that things will progress for him and he’ll get his opportunity in moving up the chain in baseball.”
In 2019, the right-hander from the Dominican Republic went 7-2 and compiled a 2.57 earned-run average in 10 starts for the Jackfish while striking out 67 batters in 63 innings.
Increasing the regular season by six games is a “long time coming” as far as Essery is concerned.
“We needed to extend our season. I believe 36 is a little bit too short, 42 is good,” he said. “That gives us a handful of mid-week games, too, to go along with our Thursday to Sunday normal schedule.”
The longer season means the Jackfish will lose four players who are going to be returning to play college baseball in the States. A couple are going into their junior year and two are going into their senior year.
“But they expanded the roster to 28 — it used to be 25 — so we will able to offset that,” he said. “Whatever we lose at the end of August, we’ll be fine. We’ll have enough players.”
The IBL regular season is scheduled to end between Aug. 15 and Aug. 20, followed by three rounds of playoffs.
‘‘ This is a good park if you’re a pitcher. It’s big, it’s wide, it’s spacious.
BRIAN ESSERY WELLAND JACKFISH MANAGER